Do you know about the Glymphatic system? The brain’s lymphatic function? Each year scientists learn more about this vital system.
In the last few days I’ve discussed the body’s lymphatic system, but we can’t ignore our glymphatic system – which is the brain’s lymphatic function.
It’s been understudied until recent years, but that’s changing as more research is being carried out to determine the glymphatic’s effect on neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
This recent discovery published in New Scientist] shows a new anatomical structure has been discovered that is part of the brain’s waste disposal system.
The tissue is a thin membrane encasing the brain that keeps newly made cerebrospinal fluid – which circulates inside the brain – separate from “dirty” fluid containing cells’ waste products.
It was already known that there are three membranes between the skull and the brain. The new structure is a fourth membrane, lying on top of the innermost membrane, called the subarachnoid lymphatic-like membrane (SLYM). It is extremely thin, with a width of just a few cells or, in places, even one cell.
The SLYM hadn’t been noticed before, partly because the membrane disintegrates when the brain is removed from the skull in post-mortems, says Maiken Nedergaard at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York, who helped discover the structure. It is also too thin to be seen in living people via brain-scanning machines.
There’s a link in the New Scientist] bio if you’d like to learn more.
Image: University of Copenhagen